Huawei Ascend II (2, m865) - Rooting & Roms

I'm sorry if this post is in the wrong area. I have also posted a similar thread in the Hacking forum.

To my understanding, Roms are mostly for customization purposes. And to use those Roms, you need a Rooted phone.

I have installed an app called Root Checker and it says that I have successfully rooted my phone.
In a tutorial that I followed, they said that I needed to downgrade my phones firmware enable to root in and that after root I would be able to upgrade it again. I have tried upgrading it by going to Settings > About phone > Online Update and... it gets stuck on "Preparing to update..."

Idk what else to do. Maybe I am totally missing something obvious.

The whole reason why I have even tried rooting it in the first place, is because the launcher won't change. No matter what launcher app I download, it is stuck on the default "HUAWEI Launcher" or "Android Theme" ?

I had the original Huawei Ascend and was able to change the launcher easily. Idk what to do...
I am really frustrated with this phone in the customization sense. The sound won't even work...

And a side note. When I tried to use Chomp SMS on this phone (I also used this on my Huawei Ascend) it let me add background pictures while customizing Conversation List and Conversation pages. This phone, won't let me do that. I hit add picture, it sends me to a picture app and tells me to choose picture, lets me "crop" it, and then goes back the previous folder inside the picture app. And when I hit back to see if it did anything, nope. Still no picture. I have installed other picture viewing apps and still nothing.

If anyone can stick with me in finding out how to really break this phone down to customize it, I would love you forever.
Please help me out.